Romance and Reality
The Victorian era and the early 20th century idealised the Elizabethan era. The Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that "The long reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603, was England's Golden Age...'Merry England,' in love with life, expressed itself in music and literature, in architecture, and in adventurous seafaring." This idealising tendency was shared by Britain and an Anglophilic America. In popular culture, the image of those adventurous Elizabethan seafarers was embodied in the films of Errol Flynn.
In response and reaction to this hyperbole, modern historians and biographers have tended to take a more dispassionate view of the Tudor period.
Read more about this topic: Elizabethan Era
Famous quotes containing the words romance and, romance and/or reality:
“Children are incurable romantics. Brimful of romance and tragedy, we whirl through childhood hopelessly in love with our parents. In our epic imagination, we love and are loved with a passion so natural and innocent we may never know its like as adults.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“Harvey: Oh, you kids these days, I’m telling you. You think the only relationship a man and a woman can have is a romantic one.
Gil: That sure is what we think. You got something better?
Harvey: Oh, romance is very nice. A good thing for youngsters like you, but Helene and I have found something we think is more appropriate to our stage of life—companionship.
Gil: Companionship? I’ve got a flea-bitten old hound at home who’ll give me that.”
—Tom Waldman (d. 1985)
“... the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)